Part 8

“I can’t help it. Carter knows nothing will take me away _that_ night!” and Dick walked rather consequentially off, quite right in his refusal, but entirely wrong in the spirit of it.

“Won’t, hey!” muttered Tom. “We’ll see!”

Somehow Dick did not enjoy the meeting that evening half as much as usual. He would keep thinking about the “base-ball players,” wondering which side had come out ahead, what kind of new uniforms the “Winners” had, and how soon the “Catapults” could afford the same.

It was queer, after that, how many things happened on Thursday night. All the croquet parties, the boating, fishing, riding. Perhaps Tom could have explained the “happen,”—Tom and Will Carter.

The prayer-meetings grew duller and duller to Dick. There were only a few there regularly, and they always said the same thing. Dea. Carter’s prayers were dreadfully long, and the minister talked as if he never would stop. And then the minister must go and start a young people’s meeting on Tuesday evening. Tuesday, Thursday, and a Bible-class Saturday nights! What was he thinking of? As if it wasn’t hard enough to bone down to rules and walk Spanish all day long without having every other minute full of prayer-meetings and that sort of thing. Dick’s father, too, as if to make amends for the long, prayerless years, had prayers twice a day. Dea. Carter only had them in the morning. Really, it seemed as if duty was leading poor Dick a slave’s life.

“Be over to the Squire’s, to-morrow night I suppose?” said Tom, the day before the annual party given by Esq. Ellis to the young people in “peach time.”

“Yes, after meeting. I must do my sums before that. May get over in time for the spread,” rejoined Dick somewhat dubiously.

“Pho! that won’t answer. Didn’t you know the Squire had set up half a dozen croquet sets, and we’re to be prompt at six o’clock? The best player has some sort of a gim-crack, and nobody stands half a chance beside you. I told the Squire so. He’ll think you backed out. Most likely Carter’ll come in next. Better be on hand.”

“Well, perhaps. I’ll think it over.”

And Dick thought it over,—how Dea. Phelps and Dr. Sault and Mr. Bugbee were very seldom at the prayer-meeting; how many church-members never came at all; how even Miss Cox stayed away for lectures and concerts. How many of us, young and old, like Dea. Phelps and Mr. Bugbee and Miss Cox, will find, away on in eternity, that we have helped somebody to just such a wrong decision as Dick came to!

He was on the croquet-grounds precisely at six, and played his best. The Squire applauded vociferously, and there was no end of complimentary remarks, enough to turn an older head than Dick’s.

“Worst of it is, I stayed too late,” he said to Tom the next morning; “and there’s those examples,—not a single one done. Had to help father every blessed minute after I got up.”

“Never mind, here’s my key. Just copy ’em right out,—everybody does. Don’t be squeamish now; just for once, you know.”

“Pity to fail, so near the end of the term,” said Will Carter. Will would not have used a key for the world; he was very particular on such points; but he had not the least scruple about tempting Dick to forfeit his honor. And after a little hesitation, Dick yielded.

Once it would have seemed cute and quite the thing to deceive Mr. Blackman; now, it made him feel mean and uneasy, especially when that gentleman remarked, “I think you are almost sure to take the prize in mathematics, Dick.”

But for that remark, however, I don’t believe Dick would ever have touched the horrid old key again. As it was, Tom _would_ lay it so “handy,” and Satan was sure to raise a doubt in Dick’s mind about the correctness of a certain multiple or divisor. Just one glance would determine; and so the glances multiplied and divided into a very common denominator.

“You’ll be over to base ball to-night, won’t you?” asked Tom one Thursday morning, not long after.

“Of course he will,” remarked Will Carter passing by, “or he’ll be turned out of the Catapults; _that’s_ sure.”

Turned out! just as they’d got their new uniforms! Of course he must go.

“And look here,” continued Tom, “didn’t you see me have a paper, my grammar exercise, in my hand all finished, when we came over the marsh yesterday?”

“No, I didn’t,” said Dick. “You said you hadn’t once thought of it.”

“Oh, fudge, now! What a poor memory! Why, man, don’t you remember seeing me lose it? slipped on the stones, you know. Come now, if you don’t, Blackman’ll keep me in to-night, sure as pop.”

“But you wouldn’t have me tell a lie, I hope?”

“Oh, no; _we_ don’t do such things _now_, _we’re_ too good,—only when it comes to them examples,” said Tom, forgetting the practical part of his grammar. “But mind, now, if you don’t trump up something to get me off—you used to be up to that sort of thing—I’ll let on to Blackman all about that key; and then where’s your prize?”

Dick turned it over and over in his mind as he walked slowly home at noon.

“My guesses you doesn’t know what this is,” called Tod from his father’s steps, holding up a leathern belt with something like shoulder-straps attached.

“No; what is it?” said Dick absently.

“It’s what my mamma used to tied me up wif, when my was vewy little, so my wouldn’t eat gween apples and curwants an’ goo-woose-berries. Her don’t have to, now.”

“Why not? Don’t you like ’em?”

“Yes, but my likes my mamma better-er; an’ her says th’ other fings is weal much nicer, so my doesn’t want ’em. Here’s anover some-fing,”—Tod was helping Jackson overhaul the tool-room. “It’s to catch fings in; and once my mamma said, my mustn’t touch, an’ my did, and it pinched—awful. My couldn’t get away one bit; the more my pulled, the tighter-er it wouldn’t let go.”

“Quite a lesson for you and me in all that,” remarked Miss Marvin, overtaking and walking along with Dick.

“Was there?”

“Yes; did you never think how full Moses’ law is, of ‘Thou shalt not’s’? while Jesus’ commands are, _Do_ this and that ‘because you love me.’ The Jews were like children, knowing so little about God they had to be ‘tied up,’ as it were, with strict laws; but when Christ came, He set His people free from rites and ceremonies, and made _love_ the motive power. And that trap reminded me how Satan catches and holds us,—the ‘tighter-er’ the more we try to get away, you know.”

Yes, Dick knew. He, Satan, was holding him fast now, at least Tom Lawrence was, for him; and if he tried to get away, oh, how hard it would pull! How did he ever come to put his hand in?

“Miss Marvin,” he broke out suddenly, “if we love God shall we like to do everything He tells us?”

“I think so, when we love Him with all our hearts.”

“But—there’s the prayer-meetings, you know. Don’t they ever seem dull and tiresome to you?”

“Yes,” said Miss Marvin frankly. “I think God knew His service would sometimes conflict with our selfish and worldly hearts when He said, ‘Take my _yoke_ upon you’; a yoke, more or less _restrains_ and compels; but almost in the same breath He added, ‘My yoke is easy.’ You and I, who once wore Satan’s yoke, know that Christ’s is easy, in comparison, don’t we, Dick? And the more we love Him the easier it becomes.”

“Yes,—I mean I did,” stammered Dick when she paused for a reply. “You see, I used to go to meeting, at first, because I loved to, but lately it’s been more because I _had_ to. I’ve just left the love right out, and _that’s_ where I fell in. Miss Marvin, please excuse me. I don’t dare wait a minute for fear it’ll pull so hard I sha’n’t get clear away.”

He ran down the street to Mr. Blackman’s, surprised that gentleman at dinner, made a full confession, and although with no hope of winning the prize, went away happier than he had been for weeks.

“Got that little thing all arranged for me?” asked Tom, with a wink, as they went up the school-house steps together.

“No, Tom. I don’t wonder you thought I could lie or do anything, but I’m just going to begin all over again,” said Dick meekly.

“No objections, I suppose, to my telling Mr. Blackman a few things to start with?”

“Not in the least, Tom, for I’ve told him the whole story myself. And I don’t mean to draw, in that ‘yoke’ again right away.”

VI.

MAYBEE’S PLEDGE.

“I came to Troas to preach Christ’s gospel, and a door was opened unto me of the Lord.”

The temperance wave sweeping over the country sent a little ripple into our quiet village of Whithaven. There were a few meetings held, a few beer-saloons closed, a small amount of earnest, personal effort, and then the tide of evil flowed on, stronger, if anything, than before.

“Patient, persevering effort—where is it to come from?” said Dr. Helps, despairingly.

“From the wives and daughters,” said Miss Marvin, hopefully. “We will pray and work in our quiet way, trusting God for the result. Poor aunty is almost heart-broken over Warren’s disgrace. You know he was picked up drunk on the street last week.”

So the ladies met weekly, not for discussion, but for prayer; they reorganized the children’s “Band of Hope,” they talked temperance at their tea-parties; and it was Miss Marvin’s suggestion that each member of the Sabbath School should try to get one new name on their pledge a week. Even the smallest scholar had his printed pledge with a pencil attached.

“I shall never dare ask anybody who drinks,” said Sue Sherman.

Maybee said nothing. That some grave matter was working behind the troubled little forehead, mamma knew very well, but she was quite willing her little girl should solve the problem herself if she could.

The secret was this: Waiting in the post-office one day, Maybee overheard one gentleman say to another, “So Dan Harte’s been drinking again? How did it happen?”

“Oh, he was at work for ’Squire Ellis, had a slight ill turn, and was dosed with liquor the first thing. To use Dan’s own words, it set him on fire. He couldn’t eat nor sleep till he’d been down to Caffrey’s and drank himself dead drunk.”

“All over with him now, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think so. He seems more determined than ever. But there’s no safety for such poor fellows unless we can put the temptation quite out of their way.”

“Which you won’t be likely to do at present. Of course the ’squire didn’t mean any harm?”

“Oh, no! and he didn’t mean any harm to Warren Forbush, I suppose.”

“It’s a pity about him. There wasn’t a finer young man anywhere round when he graduated last fall; talented, too.”

“Yes; and that gay new billiard-room on Pleasant Street is doing for him exactly what Caffrey’s did for poor Harte; but, mind you, he took his _first_ glass at the ’squire’s last New Year’s. He visits there frequently now; the ’squire has an adopted daughter, you know. That affair last week may open her eyes to the mischief their wines are working. What’s the use battling against whiskey and lager beer, and letting wine and ale alone? I believe in trying to save even the poorest specimen of humanity, but I tell you, all the while the best blood in our country is going to fill drunkards’ graves.”

“I’ll get ’Squire Ellis to sign my pledge,” thought Maybee, her black eyes flashing with her new-born purpose.

But how? That was the problem.

The two families did not even exchange calls. The ’squire had some trouble, years ago, with his brother, Say Ellis’s father, in which Mr. Sherman had been involved.

Maybee walked around by the big store and looked in. Could she ever speak to the big, broad-shouldered man, ordering, overseeing, directing, with his sharp eye and quick, decided utterance?

The next night she coaxed Tod around that way.

“Suppose we go in,” she ventured.

“No, my _won’t_,” rejoined Tod, emphatically.

Evidently she need expect no help from that quarter.

“If I could meet him on the street,” she thought; but the portly business man passed her as indifferently as he did the hand-organ on the next corner.

Every day, for two weeks, she extended her walk past the big store on her way to and from school. Every night after her usual prayer went up the whispered petition, “Please, dear Father, show me how.”

At last she made a confidant of Sue.

“Mercy on me! Nobody ever could, and besides, you won’t have any chance.”

Quite crushed by this chilling response, Maybee fled to mamma.

“He’d ought to; he’s hurting folks when he don’t know it,” she sobbed. “Won’t you or papa or some big body ask him to please stop?”

“_May be_,” said mamma, wiping away the tears, “it is this little body’s special work, and if it is, God will provide a way. When He has a work for us to do He always opens the door. Only be patient, and watch and wait.”

A week or two afterwards, Tod, neat and clean as a pin, started for papa’s shop. Esq. Ellis stood in his store door. It had been an unusually profitable day, and the merchant was in the best of humor.

“Well, my little man, where are you bound?” he smilingly remarked, as Tod came along.

“My isn’t _your_ little man. Her said my was, but my isn’t; and my isn’t a beggar neither,” rejoined Tod, straightening up.

“Well, ’pon my word! if it isn’t the little fellow who wanted fifty cents one day, and I was in such a hurry—”

“Own-y-to-ny papas stop hurwying when their little boys ask weal hard,” persisted Tod.

The merchant’s lip quivered: there came to him so suddenly the touch of little fingers hidden away in the grave for more than twenty years, the sound of childish voices to which he had never answered “Nay.” He sat down on the steps and drew Tod to him.

“I used to love little boys,” he said, huskily, “but it’s so many years ago. Will you tell me your name, and come and dine with me some day?”

“But my shall be my own papa’s little boy.”

“Yes, yes; but you could come and see me because I haven’t any little boys. You shall have something nice.”

“Choc’late ca’mels and ice-cweam?”

“Yes, and I’ll send the carriage for you,—let me see, to-morrow. Wait a minute and I’ll write mamma a note.”

“Can’t Maybee come too?”

“Who is Maybee?”

“Why, don’t you know Maybee Sherman, my cousin?” asked Tod, in astonishment.

“Sherman, Sherman? Oh, well! she’s only a small chip, and it is time bygones were bygones. Yes, I’ll write Maybee’s mamma a note, too.”

Wasn’t Tod on tiptoe with expectation, and didn’t he and Maybee sit back so straight in the grand carriage, behind the colored driver, as almost to break their dear little necks? And how splendid everything was,—the pictures, the fountains and flowers, the china and silver, Mrs. Ellis in her silk and laces, Miss Georgiana with her diamond rings and soft, slender hands.

“I wonder if I dare,” thought Maybee, her heart giving a sudden bound as the waiter came in with the dainty tray of wine-glasses. “If you please, Mr. ’Squire, would you—so other folks wouldn’t—’cause they can’t help it,” she broke out earnestly, slipping her little pledge on top of the glass her host was raising to his lips.

“What? How? Nonsense! What does such a little midget as you know about such things?”

“Please—I _do_ know; it’s so _very_ bad. You see, they were both drunk,—Phosy’s father and Bell Forbush’s big brother; an’ he’s so nice; an’ you’ve only to write your name under there, and never give anybody any more.”

If she had coupled Dan Harte with Walter Forbush! But she had said “Phosy’s father.” The ’squire looked at his daughter. She leaned forward, with crimsoning cheeks.

“We have wanted so much not to use it any more,” she said in a low tone.

He turned to his wife.

“I think it would be better every way,” she ventured. She would never have dreamed of making the suggestion, knowing how hard and selfish the worldly heart had grown, missing the touch of those baby fingers.

Walter Forbush and Dan Harte! He coupled them now in his own mind. Was it a common weakness, and would the one ever sink as low as the other? Suppose _his_ boys had lived—and been tempted? Even old Dan Harte was once somebody’s boy, fair and promising.

“Take the wine away,” he said to the waiter, at the same time picking up Maybee’s little pencil and writing his name in full under the simple promise.

“I knew there’d be a ‘door,’ somewhere! Mamma said God could make one,” said Maybee, joyously. “And to think you ’vited me your own self!”

VII.

THE “NEW SONG.”

“And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it and fear, and shall trust in the Lord.”

“It’s coming up fast!”

“Work lively, boys! Do your best and you shan’t be sorry.”

How they raked—great, heaping winrows! How they tossed—huge fork-fulls, half covering the men on the loads! How they hurried the fat, lazy horses and slow, plodding oxen hither and thither across the fields!

Meanwhile the low muttering of the thunder grew louder and louder, and large drops of rain came thicker and faster.

“Pitch on what you can and make for the barn,” called out farmer Vance. “It’s no use trying for the rest, and we’ve got the heft of it. Drive up! Steady, Joe!”

“I reckon there’d a been some pretty tall swearing if the shower’d come fifteen minutes sooner,” said one of the men, swinging his coat over his shoulder and walking leisurely after.

“Vance may do a little in that line yet,” rejoined another, who was shouldering rakes, forks, and a pile of hay-caps. “Look at that load, will you? Just a lee-tle—there it goes!”

A stone on one side, a slight depression on the other, the unwieldy mass swayed, toppled, and slid to the ground, carrying with it the driver and Dan Harte, who floundered out of the drift as the rain began to fall in torrents.

“Now look out for breakers! Take Dan and Vance together, they’ll make it hot for Joe.”

These two had helped the farmer through more than one haying season, and were accustomed to the passionate outbreaks of a naturally quick temper.

“An’ if there’s one thing more aggravatin’ than another it’s to have a lot of hay, jest in complete order, get a right down soakin’,” remarked the first speaker, as they hurried up to the scene of the disaster.

Joe, the driver, was staring bewilderedly around; Dan had already seized a pitchfork; the farmer stood by the horses’ heads.

“You ought to have looked out for that low place,” he was saying. “Where were your eyes, Joe? Never mind now, the mischief’s done. Scrabble up, and drive on with what’s left,—no use crying for spilt milk. We’ll pick up the pieces some other time. It’s coming, boys! Into the barn all of you!”

The man in the shirt-sleeves looked at his companion and gave a low whistle of astonishment.

“Beats all!” said the other; and then, as the tree-tops began to reel in the oncoming tempest, everybody rushed for shelter. There was ample room on the broad barn-floor. The horses quietly munched their oats, the men disposed of themselves here and there, some astride of milking-stools, some stretched at full length on the soft, sweet-smelling hay, some propped up against the open door, till the shifting wind obliged even that to be closed against the rain and hail.

“I say, Harte, tune up; give us a rouser. Haven’t heard you sing for an age; wish you had your fiddle.”

All the frequenters of Caffrey’s groggery knew Dan’s musical powers, which were really of no mean order, albeit for years they had served to gratify the lowest passions of vile, half-drunken men. Many a time he had helped the speaker make night hideous.

The man nudged Dan now, showing the neck of a small flask in his pocket, as he whispered, “Give us a regular high one, and here’s for you.”

Farmer Vance was busy with his horses. Dan waited a moment, a flush of red showing through his bronzed cheek. Then in a full, clear voice, he broke out with—

“Ho! my comrades, see the signal Waving in the sky, Reinforcements now appearing, Victory is nigh!

_Cho_:—“Hold the fort for I am coming, Jesus signals still. Wave the answer back to heaven, By Thy grace we will!”

Farmer Vance was the first to strike in on the chorus; he sang a tolerably good bass. Very soon two or three of the others caught the strain, and the barn fairly rang with the soul-inspiring words.

“I give it up,” whispered Joe Derrick to our friend of the shirt-sleeves. “Think of Dan Harte singing psalm tunes! There must be a something to turn him right square about so. An’ the old place, too. Been by there lately? Looks like a garding—all the front yard does. An’ he’s built on a shed for his wife to wash in; actu’ly has a carpet in t’other room.”

“I suppose you an’ me could have carpets, Joe, if we’d let drink alone,” said the other, soberly. “But what beats me is the way Vance held in out there in the hay-field. ’Tain’t natural, ’n I can’t account for ’t. If anybody’d a told me that man would stand there and see that hay as good as sp’iled and never say a word—he looked kind a riled, you could see that—I’d a risked my best hat!”

“But seein’’s believin’, and as for hearin’—Hark, now!”

Dan had struck into,

“No surrender to the foe! Shout the cry where’er you go. Falter never! we must win, No surrendering to sin. No surrender! Let it be Battle cry for you and me. God will help us, He is near, He is with us, do not fear.

“No surrender! then at last All our conflicts over-past, Glad will be our welcoming To the city of the King. Forward, then! fall into line! Bright the conqueror’s crown will shine. Storm the camp of sin and wrong, Sweet will be the victor’s song.”

“I ain’t sure but we’d better enlist,” said Joe, half-laughing, but drawing his sleeve suspiciously across his eyes. “I never thought much of psalm-singing an’ new doings; but when you see they’re good for something—I tell you what: if Vance says anything more about our going to church, I’m his man. I believe I’ll try a hand at that myself.”

VIII.

THE WONDERFUL BOOK.

“These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.”

“Aunty McFane is real sick,” whispered Dick to Sue Sherman in the Sabbath School class. “I stopped there this morning. The doctor says she can’t live a great while.”

“I’m so sorry. Who is with her?” asked Sue, her face full of real concern.

“Judy Ryan. Father has hired her to stay all the time. Isn’t it nice?”

“Splendid! Judy is so neat,—and she likes what Aunty McFane likes.” Sue added the last in a still lower whisper.

“I know,” said Dick. “She had just been reading a chapter in the Bible out loud, and Aunty McFane said there was a promise for every ache she had. Isn’t it funny,” he continued, turning to Miss Marvin, “that folks just as different as can be find exactly what they want in the Bible?”

“It was provided for everybody by One who knew all hearts,” rejoined Miss Marvin; “and the more we study it, the more wonderful it seems. I remember reading once about a silver egg, prepared as a present to a Saxon queen. You opened the silver by a secret spring, and there was found a yolk of gold. You found the spring of the gold, and it flew open and disclosed a beautiful bird. Press the wings of the bird, and in its breast was found a crown, jewelled and radiant. And within the crown, upheld by a spring like the rest, was a ring of diamonds which fitted the finger of the princess. ‘So,’ said the author, ‘there is many a promise within a promise, in the Bible, the silver around the gold, the gold around the jewels; and too few of God’s children ever find their way far enough among the springs to discover the crown of His rejoicing or the ring of His covenant of peace.’”

“There are great minds who don’t believe a word of the Bible,” said Will Carter.

“Yes; but in spite of all these great minds can do and say, men, women, and children go on, year after year, finding comfort, happiness, and help, as well as eternal life, in its pages.”

“Oh! it’s all well enough for poor, low, ignorant people, who haven’t any other comfort,” rejoined Will, carelessly.